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Nikos was vibrating to tell me his big plan, but he first insisted we throw some clothes on so he could get food. He says his workouts are useless if he doesn’t get protein into his body pronto. He drove us over to Father’s Office on Montana Avenue just before they closed. I watched him eat a turkey burger while he strained to talk over the loud bar scene.
“We could score some real cash. Be happy for a long time,” Nikos said.
“Happy? My mother wipes her ass with diamonds and she’s miserable. Me? I have everything I need,” I said.
“Your power’s off.”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“Well, I don’t have everything I need. If I got my hands on some money, I could finally get my reality show off the ground.”
Nikos had talked about his reality show idea since I met him. He found his own life fascinating and insisted he’d have an audience who wanted to see him trim trees.
“What kind of money are you talking?” I asked.
“A quick five figures. That’s all I need. I can get it with your help.”
“How?”
“This new client up in Brentwood,” he said.
“How’d that happen?”
“Huh?”
“Brentwood. That’s playing with the big boys, isn’t it? How’d you land that?”
“Oh. Client referral. Word of mouth.”
Word of mouth? I wasn’t sure which client could have referred him into one of Los Angeles’s richest neighborhoods. Nikos’s business card may have said “Tree Trimmer to the Stars”, but I’d never seen him do anything other than low-paying apartments in North Hollywood and mid-Wilshire.
“Anyway, this new client…” he continued, “Remember how I left my phone at his house earlier?”
“Wait, Hal Brinkley?”
Nikos looked shocked. “How do you know Hal Brinkley?”
“That’s the new client?”
“Yeah. Hal Brinkley. He’s a movie producer.”
“Figures. He talks like one,” I said.
“Huh? You talked to him?”
“He called me from your phone. Seems nice.”
“He’s not. Stay away from him.”
“Why?”
“Don’t worry about it. Look, just let me tell you the idea,” he said.
I picked up my phone.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Googling this Hal Brinkley,” I said.
“Why do you want to Google him? You’re not going to—you hate show business. What are you looking for?”
“I just want to see what he’s produced.”
“You don’t know shit about movies,” Nikos said, edgy.
“What makes you think we can get money off this stiff?”
“I told you. He’s a producer.”
“You know how many people in this town call themselves a producer?” I thought of the Mondrian pool with big-titty Chelsea and her greasy wolf-pack.
“How many?”
“I don’t know, but it’s a shit ton.”
“Austin, you don’t know the business. I do.”
“What’s he done?” I asked.
“Grape Street Gringo.”
“What’s that?”
“What’s that? See? Holy shit, Austin. This is embarrassing—”
“I’m guessing it’s some movie he produced.”
“Uh, yeah. Grape Street isn’t some movie. It’s a cult classic. They hold a GSG Festival and show it every year at Hollywood Forever. Huge following. The entire audience knows all the lines. It’s a thing.”
I went back to my internet search. “Did Grape Street Gringo make money? What’s this cat worth?”
He took a hold of my wrist. “Just put the phone down and listen, will you?”
I put my phone face down on the table and leaned back.
He said, “I start working this guy’s trees. This Hal Brinkley. His place is ridiculous. Huge. Sick view. It overlooks the entire city. Anyway, I finish up the day, and he invites me in for a drink. We go into his office, he pours me one, and says he wants to settle up. Says he doesn’t want to wait for me to finish the job. Doesn’t like owing anyone. I tell him my rate and how a proper job’ll take two weeks, and he goes into the safe. I take a peek inside, and it’s stacked with cash. I mean, stacked. He hands me an armful of bills. Says, ‘Go ahead and count off two weeks worth.’ I'm talking, he just hands it to me. And get this—while I’m holding the cash, and the safe’s open, he goes to take a piss. He’s not even there when I’m counting.”
“So that’s it? The safe?” I said.
“Yep. Easy, right?” Nikos said.
“Come on, finish your burger. We’ll go back to the room and take a bath in that giant tub.”
“Don’t you want to talk about the safe?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“It’ll never work.”
“We just need to get inside. I have a plan on how we can do it.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s a loser scheme.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“A safe? In some rich guy’s house? Come on,” I said.
Nikos got angry. “If I’m such a loser, why do you bother with me?”
“Whoah, pump the brakes. Who said you’re a loser?”
“You just said.”
“No, I said the safe idea is a loser.”
“Why? Because it’s my idea? I’m too stupid, is that it?”
“No,” I said. “You’re not stupid. You just haven’t thought this through all the way.”
“That’s why I’m talking to you,” he said.
“Nope. Forget it. You want to go back to jail? A racket like that will get your ass right back in Kings County. I’m not helping you get there. You do this, you’re on your own.”
“No, we have to do this together.”
“Why?”
He didn’t have an answer. But I could see him looking for one. “Look, it’s easy. It’s in the office—”
“Easy, huh? What’s the home surveillance situation? Cameras? Motion sensors? You say it’s a gigantic house—how many people on property at one given time? Does he have guns?”
Nikos looked like a cornered ferret. Then something shifted. He shook his head, upset.
“I should have known. This is the reality show all over again,” he said.
“What?”
“You shit all over my reality show idea and now you’re shitting all over this. Any idea I have, you just shit—”
“Okay, stop with the shitting. Hon, the reason I hated your reality show idea is that you wanted me to be in the damned thing.”
“Yeah, because people would watch. They want to see you. What you’re doing now. But no. It was my idea, so you don’t listen.”
“I’m keeping your pretty face out of prison. You’ll thank me later,” I said.
“You don’t take me seriously.”
“Come on. Get me in that Casa Del Mar tub. I’ll show you how serious I take you.”
“It’s not funny, Austin. You don’t take me seriously. But I should have known. An apple doesn’t fall out of a tree.”
“Huh?”
“I said, an apple never falls out of a tree, does it?”
“What’s that mean?”
“This is the stuff you’re always bitching about your mother.”
“It’s completely different,” I said.
“Oh, yeah? Which part? The part where you say I haven’t thought this all the way through? Or the part where you tell me I’ll thank you later?”
His face looked like I felt my entire childhood—like the dog waiting for the kick after peeing on the Persian carpet.
“Let’s just go. I’ll settle up,” he said and headed for the bar.
I followed him, watching his defeated, slumped shoulders.
Holy shit. Nikos was right. I had turned into my mother, even using her assy catchphrase that he’d thank me later.
Looking back, I should have watched him eat his thirty grams of protein, let him think I’m my mother, and part ways after maybe one last sweaty climax.
But I didn’t do that. I followed him to the bar, looked in his pouty face, and said, “Tell me more about the safe.”
God, I’m an idiot.
***
But I was a hell of a lot smarter than Nikos. Back at Casa Del Mar, he tap-danced and sold me his hustle about Hal Brinkley and the Amazing Technicolor Safe Full of Money. Thirty seconds in, I knew there was no plan. But seeing his bruised ego yanking at his puppet strings, I sat on the edge of the bed with a perma-grin and pretended to listen.
He ping-ponged all over the place, making things up as he went along. I thought of all the weeks he’d taken improv classes. He should have demanded a refund. He spent five minutes talking about spending the stolen money on his reality show. Then five more minutes on the name of the reality show, eventually settling on Nikos’s Tree Spree. Whenever I interjected with questions of security, cameras, neighborhood patrols, he said the same thing— “We’ll figure all that out. We just need to get over there and leave the rest to me.”
I let the floor show go on for fifteen minutes until he wore himself out. Then, like a toddler who’d had too big of a day, he flopped on the bed next to me and passed right out.
My worst fears proved true. He had no blueprint on how to run it, but had dollar signs in his eyes for his damned reality show. He was determined to stick his hand in the hornet’s nest. But you don’t just walk into some rich guy’s house and take his safe. That’s amateur hour. And a recipe for a prison stretch or getting shot.
I knew he would do it—plan or no plan. And he wanted me along for the ride. He wanted to take this movie producer’s safe together. I had to admit it warmed my little, black, coal-heart. I looked at Niko’s peaceful, sleeping face by my side. His emotional vulnerability was one of the things I liked about him. He was so easily hurt when he thought I hadn’t taken him seriously. You take away all the bench press reps, all the protein shakes, and the model good looks, and underneath it all was a little boy. And that little boy adored me. He treated me nice and wanted me around.
I wasn’t going to walk into some king’s castle cold off the street without some research. But I had to do it without Nikos’s knowing. I would let him think he was in charge of this swindle. I stroked Nikos’s back with one hand and went to work on my phone with the other.
Google searches for Hal Brinkley pulled up some low-res shots. He seemed easy on the eyes. I also found a bunch of movie business news articles from nearly twenty years ago. Apparently, at one time, Brinkley had been an up-and-coming hotshot artiste. The studio gave him some big movie to direct, “the youngest director since Orson Welles to…” blah, blah, blah. Useless stuff. I got a Brentwood address, though.
***
The next morning, after making sure Nikos’s breathing maintained coma levels of deep sleep, I rolled out of bed and got dressed.
I walked over to Pico Boulevard and stopped on the corner. I looked for a car with an Uber sticker. It didn’t take me long. Uber motorists are like cockroaches… with driver’s licenses. I walked over to a white Toyota Prius with blinking hazards who had parked in the middle of the busy street, waiting for his rider.
I jumped in the car. The bald, hefty, middle-aged man behind the wheel didn’t even take his eyes from his phone. “Bill?” he asked.
“That’s right,” I said.
When he heard a woman’s voice he turned around.
“Bill’s my husband. My phone died,” I said.
“Alrighty. I’m Mel,” he said.
“Mind if we change the address, Mel?” I asked.
“Nope. Where to?”
“Up in Brentwood. Parkyns and Bristol.”
Good enough for him, and we cruised off. As we did, I saw an angry, young guy on the corner looking for his Uber. I guessed he was the real Bill.
Three blocks up, I made Mel stop at a Starbucks to get my eyes open. I walked in and went over to the pickup counter for online orders. The barista put down two drinks and yelled out, “Shana! One skinny mocha and one black coffee with an add shot!”
I scooped them up.
“You Shana?” the barista asked.
“Yep. This isn’t decaf, is it? Last time you gave me decaf.”
“No, it’s caff.”
“Thanks,” I said, and swung out the door.
I hopped in the front passenger seat of Mel’s Uber.
“You pick. Mocha or coffee?” I said.
***
Nikos hadn’t exaggerated. Hal Brinkley lived in a ginormous estate. Mel and I sat in the front seats of his car, far enough from Brinkley’s property not to draw attention, but close enough where I could watch the front gate. We sipped our coffees.
“You think Bill’s figured out by now someone took his Uber?” Mel asked.
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Before I picked you up, I had talked to this ‘Bill’ guy.”
“Huh. He didn’t mention driving his wife?”
Mel turned to me. “Nope. And he mentioned nothing about driving Austin Wellington.”
“Ah. Then you’re a TMZ and celebrity gossip fan.”
“No, I used to be a doorman at the Hyatt House on Sunset.”
I shuddered. “Oh?… Did you work there ten years ago?”
“I did.”
“Look, back then—”
“You know what made me an excellent doorman?”
“What?”
“Same thing that makes me an excellent Uber driver. I know what’s my business, what’s not, and when to keep my fat mouth shut.”
“That makes you a good anything,” I said.
He smiled at me. “You changed your hair. Looks good.”
“Thanks. Wait, if you knew I wasn’t with Bill—”
“Bill screamed me down on the phone for being late. Called me an incompetent slob.”
“Oh.”
“Thanks for the coffee,” Mel said.
“You bet,” I said.
“Here’s to Bill,” he said, and raised his paper cup.
“To Bill,” I said. We knocked our cups together in a toast.
I nodded to the estate. “You mind sticking around for a bit? I’ll make it worth your while.”
“You don’t have to do that. Bill’s meter’s running,” he said.
“Fuck Bill. This is you and me now, Mel,” I said. I reached in my pocket and handed him one of the hundred-dollar bills Nikos had given me.
“That’s too generous,” he said.
“Tell me about it. But I’d rather give it to you than the electric company.”
“Do I have to do anything illegal?” he asked before taking it.
“Only adjacently.”
“Is that considered being an accomplice or aiding and abetting?”
“I don’t know. I never got that law degree my mother wanted,” I said.
“Sorry, Ma. Life is full of disappointments,” Mel said. He took the hundred. “What makes you think you can trust me?” he said.
“I have an instinct for people, Mel.”
“Fair enough.”
***
We watched the gate for an hour without a word. Finally, the gate came to life with a mechanical whirr and opened up. A silver Mercedes pulled onto the street. Brinkley’s face, behind the wheel, matched the Google pics I’d seen. Mel let a safe distance develop before following him.
We went down the hill to Sunset and turned into eastbound traffic. Mel should have been a private investigator. He tailed Brinkley for a couple miles, never once losing him, yet keeping the cars well distanced. The Mercedes cruised south down to West Hollywood. He pulled onto Santa Monica Boulevard, and Mel managed to navigate through all the stop lights and pedestrian crossings. We saw Brinkley take a right on Robertson. We followed.
“Easy, easy,” I said to Mel when we turned the corner. Brinkley parked the car on the street. “Right here’s good,” I said, opening the door.
“Want me to stick around?” Mel asked.
“No, I don’t know how long it’ll be,” I said.
“Here,” he said, handing me a card. “I know everyone texts and stuff, but I still like a business card. Call me if you ever need a ride.”
“With how often they suspend my license, I’m sure we’re gonna become good buddies, Mel.”